Frontier Museum

This is a neat living museum not far from us. It shows the frontier life from various countries, with period actors sharing information and demonstrations. The buildings are all original to both the country and time period they represent. Most of the homes are from the late 1600's and early 1700's. The American homestead area is being renovated but had homes and buildings from the 1800's. All the homes are furnished with period furniture and accessories. It was a beautiful day and we went because it was sheep shearing time and this tied in great with one of the books we were doing in school.

The shearing took place in England. They had both the american sheep and the traditional Cotswold sheep from England. It was amazing how the sheep just hung out while being clipped.

The girls got to participate in the cleaning , carding and dyeing of the freshly sheared wool.

We also got to see how they spun the wool into thread and then wove it on a loom into fabric.

On the Irish homestead they were demonstrating how Flax is turned into a fine thread for making linen cloth. It is very labor intensive. The girls got to try their hand at it.

They also had some traditional Irish music being played indoors.

Of course there were many animals to see, much to the delight of Aaron. The lambs were very fun to watch and very playful.

The German homestead had an assortment of very colorful roosters and chickens.

The Cotswold sheep from England

The Iron Smith's shop. He was fun and informative and showed us how to make several of the needed items of the period. It was hard to get some good pictures due to the smoke from the wood burning.

There are huge bellows behind the chimney, used to control the fire and the temperature. The Iron smith operated them with the lever just above his head.

There was a nice pond with ducks that we enjoyed feeding. Aaron wanted them to eat out of his hand, though was still thrilled with them coming close and eating at his feet. Hannah took this picture, it's nice to have another photo taker, so I get to be in some pictures.

The English homestead. We decided that the bed quarters for all the houses were quite small. Some of the adult beds didn't look like you could lay down in them. And we found out they didn't'. They usually slept semi upright , to help with breathing and respiratory issues due to sleeping with a burning fire in the room.

This was the nicest bedroom we saw, with a child bed underneath.

Wildflower Walk

We went on a beautiful walk that ran along a mountain stream, it was filled with a wide variety of wild flowers. Here are some pictures from our outing. Some are not so good, as I was taking pictures while slinging Caleb, so between the wind and Caleb's interest in my camera lense cover dangling near him, my point of focus was often changed during the picture taking.

I just love the sound of the water flowing and babbling over the rocks.

Virginia Bluebells

Delphinium???

Fringed Woodland Iris

Star Chickweed

There were lots of Trilium all over, growing in groups and some were over 18" tall.

White Trillium

Red Trillium

Pink Painted Trillium

Wild Geraniums




Lauren found her name on the side of a tree, she thought it was wild to find your name on a nature walk, but then decided she didn't like the fact that someone used "her" name to hurt a tree. We have to try and find the names of the rest of these and others that we have found since. Hope you enjoy our little walk.

Caleb the cute!

We think so anyway. Well I'm certainly not going to have to worry about blogging too much, at this rate I'll be lucky to get in one a month. We'll see if I can't improve my frequency. But I guess it's better to be busy with life, than busy writing about it. So as promised pictures of our little guy. This was hard, sooo many pictures to choose from.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I won't have much to add. Caleb is just a joy and totally has his siblings captivated, well maybe his parents too!

He is... busy and curious,

He has a really fun chuckle, that just doesn't seem like a fit for such a little guy

and he is ticklish, which is quite fun and he clearly has a sense of humor and knows when he is being silly

He loves to eat ANYTHING, this keeps me on my toes because he has no discrimination between food and non food so anything he can hold is fair game and unfortuanately he has quite a well developed pincer grasp and can pick up the tiniest things. He has taken having a clean floor to a whole new level!

He has a very unique combat crawl that is just well funny, he gets where he wants to go quickly, he is also pulling to standing, cruising the furniture and making his way up the stairs

Just love that cute little body!

He's got hair that frequently looks crazy and sticks straight up, he's determined, knows what he wants, talkative, snuggly, is crazy about his siblings and smiles easily. He's started clapping and thinks it's just great.

We've done some fun things recently that I'll have to write about and share some pictures. A fun wildflower nature walk and a trip to a local Frontier Museum.

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter. Our first here in Virginia. It was made even more special as our dear friends from NC came and spent the long weekend with us. We are use to spending holidays with family and friends and it was nice for this tradition to continue in a new way here. Our kids have had the privilege of growing up with each other and so they get along fabulously and really enjoyed getting to share their new house with their friends and spend some time together, as they are used to seeing each other daily.

We did manage an egg hunt, even though it was chilly and didn't seem quite like a spring Easter.

Aaron wasn't at first sure why he was being asked to find these plastic eggs in the grass, until......he discovered they had candy in them. Then he couldn't find enough. Though he is not really a big candy eater, he loves M&M's. Ken had to keep re hiding his eggs, as he was such an enthusiastic finder.

Caleb took this opportunity to sleep!

We have a tradition of making Resurrection rolls each Easter. Taking a marshmallow (Jesus) coating it in cinnamon (burial spices) and then wrapping it in a crescent roll (burial cloths) and putting it in the oven (tomb). When it has been baked the marshmallow has disappeared ( Jesus is risen). What is left if the sweet taste of the marshmallow (the Holy Spirit). We've been doing this since Hannah was little and it has become a favorite and looked forward to tradition. Here Lauren is making one with some of our friends.

We also enjoyed decorating egg shaped cookies and our children and friends always enjoy producing some kind of performance when together. They are always very silly and fun to see them all working together to express their creativity.

Here is a picture in our Sunday attire. We have finally found a church we are liking. They apparently do a big Easter drama the week before Easter, so when we arrived on Sunday morning there was a live Camel, sheep, lambs, donkey and chickens outside the church in an elaborate set up looking like old Jerusalem. The props and animals had been used during the drama the night before. As you can imagine the kids were surprised and excited. I'll have to post some pictures later. Aaron was quite taken with the Camel.

A wonderful weekend celebrating Easter and the company of our friends.

I'm working on a post about Caleb, as I know many are wanting some pictures of him. It's hard to narrow them down. As Lauren frequently states when playing with him, " I can't take it, he's s000000 cute". Hopefully later this week.

Catherine